PRTG Manual: Notifications

PRTG uses notifications to send you an alert, for example, whenever PRTG discovers a defined sensor status or when channels breach specific limits. You can define an unlimited number of notifications using one or more notification methods. PRTG sends notifications to a user's notification contacts that you can define for each user account.

For more information, see the video tutorial: Notifications.

Overview

PRTG sends a notification when a defined event triggers it. The following events can trigger notifications:

Event	Examples
Sensor status change	A sensor changes from the Up status to the Down or the Warning status because responses are slow. A sensor changes to the Unusual status.
Sensor value threshold breach	A sensor shows a request time that is higher than 1,000 ms for more than 30 minutes. Free disk space is below 10%.
Speed threshold breach	A traffic sensor shows more than 1 Mbit/s for more than 5 minutes.
Volume threshold breach	A traffic sensor shows more than 1 GB transferred in 24 hours.
Sensor value change	A specific value changes, for example, when the sensor monitors files on a hard disk drive.

Notification Methods

A notification can use one or more of the following notification methods:

For more information, see section Notification Templates.

Placeholders

Notifications can contain valuable sensor information that you can define via placeholders, for example:

Last error message
Last successful or failed request
Total downtime
Total uptime
Recent sensor history
A direct link to the PRTG web interface

For available placeholders, see section Placeholders for Notifications.

Notifications Setup

You must take the following four steps to set up and use notifications:

Check and set up the notification delivery settings if you use PRTG Network Monitor. These settings define how PRTG sends messages.
Check and set up notification contacts for the user accounts. These contacts define the recipients to which PRTG sends notifications.
Check and set up several notification templates. These templates define the notification methods and their content.
You can also check or edit notification templates via the Notification Triggers tab. For more information, see section Notification Triggers Settings.
Check and set up notification triggers settings for objects. These triggers define when PRTG sends notifications.

Usually, there are three successive attempts to deliver a notification. If all of these attempts fail, the notification is lost. To never miss a notification, we recommend that you always set up at least two notifications with different notification methods for a notification trigger, for example, one email notification and one SMS notification. If delivery via email fails, PRTG can still notify you via smartphone as a fallback. For example, use the latency setting of a state trigger to choose a notification with a different notification method than in the first trigger condition, or set up a second trigger with a different notification method for the corresponding object.

For a detailed step-by-step guide, see the Paessler website: How to set up notifications via the PRTG web interface.

Custom notification scripts are also available in the PRTG Sensor Hub.

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